Archive for the ‘tiger’ Tag

Thanks to Ricky Gervais and Ian Somerhalder for tweeting about Tony recently on Twitter. Follow Tony on Twitter: @TonyTiger2000 and @FreeTonyTiger. Mr. Gervais also posted Tony’s story on his Facebook page where it has so far received almost 1800 LIKES, over 100 comments and 500 shares! Social networking is such a great way to help Tony. So keep tweeting, posting and ROARING for this beautiful tiger!

Ricky Gervais’ tweet for Tony included a link to our Dodo community post and ALDF’s video of Tony:

THANKS to ALL of Tony’s friends who nominated, tweeted and shared! This is a great platform to bring Tony’s story and that of captive tigers to more people.

“Each Official Category will have 7 finalists. These include 3 with the most nominations from the public, 3 selected by members of the Real-Time Academy of Short Form Arts & Sciences which is comprised of luminaries from advertising, media, entertainment and the internet, and 1 Wildcard Finalist.”

The winners of the 7th Annual Shorty Awards, as chosen by The Academy, will be revealed at the ceremony on April 20th, 2015 at TheTimesCenter at the New York Times building in New York City.

Please join us in congratulating Tony by sharing this post! Easy share buttons below and if you’re on Twitter be sure to follow @TonyTiger2000 and use the hashtag #Shorty4Tony

Just a quick note to THANK all of Tony’s friends for their awesome support during the Shorty Awards. Nominations CLOSED on February 19th, 2015; the Shorty Awards website states that “All finalists will be announced soon.”

Captive U.S. tigers are used in roadside zoos and attractions, photo ops and exhibitions, entertainment shows and circuses, pseudo-sanctuaries, bred for profit or are owned as “pets.” From IFAW: “Private possession of big cats is a legal patchwork: 30 states ban private possession, 14 states allow possession with a permit, and 6 states have absolutely no restrictions on private possession at all.” ( http://www.ifaw.org/united-states/big-cat-advocates-map )

THE BIG CATS AND PUBLIC SAFETY PROTECTION ACT
One of the most important ways we can help tigers like Tony and other captive big cats in the United States is to support The Big Cats and Public Safety Protection Act. This bill would prohibit the private possession and breeding of captive big cats in the United States except at highly-qualified facilities like accredited zoos where they can be properly cared for and safely managed. It would only allow breeding at accredited zoos, along with some research or educational institutions.

Note: Retweeted nominations and tweets starting with @replies do not count toward the rankings. Voting for the same person in the same category more than once just replaces the text of your original vote; it does not count as an additional vote.

Tony, a Siberian-Bengal tiger, was born in July 2000 and has been at Tiger Truck Stop in Grosse Tete, Louisiana since he was a cub. According to Mr. Sandlin (Tony’s “owner”) he got Tony from a breeder in Texas. In 2003, three tigers: Toby and Rainbow 18 years old and 8 year old Khan were removed from the truck stop due to AWA volations which included: “unsanitary feeding practices; mishandling tigers; and failure to provide veterinary care, shelter from inclement weather, clean drinking water, and knowledgeable employees to care for the tigers.” The USDA allowed Sandlin to keep one tiger, Tony, who was 3 years old at the time.

Tony has brought worldwide attention to the serious issue of captive tigers in the U.S. where there are more privately owned tigers (est. 5,000 – 10,000) than left in the wild (est. 3,200.) Regarding Tony: Michael Sandlin’s state permit was found illegal and revoked in 2011 by Judge Michael Caldwell; this decision was upheld by The Louisiana Appeal Court and the Louisiana Supreme Court. Though the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries had the authority to seize Tony and enforce the law and these rulings, they refused to. When Mr. Sandlin exhausted his appeals he enlisted Sen. Rick Ward to propose a bill to exempt himself from the 2006 law barring private ownership of big cats. The bill was passed by the Louisiana Legislature and signed by Gov. Bobby Jindal. The Animal Legal Defense Fund has been working tirelessly on Tony’s case and has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Louisiana taxpayers, challenging the state’s new special exemption. http://aldf.org/cases-campaigns/timelines/tony-the-tiger/

Three sanctuaries have standing offers of homes for Tony. One such sanctuary’s tiger habitats start at 8,000 sq ft or more, all natural substrate, perches, hammock, pool, toys/enrichment and access to an indoor temperature controlled building. Keepers have 4 year zoology degrees and a vet hospital on-site. Another sanctuary recently debuted a 2.5 acre habitat for their cats to “vacation in” with platforms, dens, trees, foliage, a pond and enrichment toys. A sanctuary in Colorado, whose executive director and founder has 35 years of experience in rescuing, transporting, relocating and acclimating tigers and other big cats to their new habitats without incident, can provide a natural habitat 10-20 acres in size on rolling prairie grasslands, complete with swimming ponds and seasonal lakes. They all have underground dens (that stay about 60 degrees year round), shade shelters and play structures, and all kinds of toys and enrichment. His enclosure may be 3200 sq ft, but it’s a dismal 1600 sq ft of concrete and a small “grassy area” that offers him no opportunity to run or engage in any natural behaviors. He has been subjected to the noise and smells of the truck stop and the taunting of tourists for 15 years.

Tony Nominated For A Shorty Award!

The Shorty Awards recognize the best in social media. Tony’s nomination not only raises awareness to his plight, but to the 5,000 plus captive tigers in the United States. Captive tigers suffer in roadside zoos, circuses, and traveling exhibitions; tigers cubs are bred for profit and used in photo & feeding ops, when they are no longer longer “cute” and “legal” to exploit, and turn into 300 to 500 lb. dangerous cats, they face years of captive life in roadside zoos/exhibits and pseudo-sanctuaries. Others are bred to produce more cubs, end up in canned hunts, or are killed and sold on the black market.

Voting ends February 19th 2015 at 11:59pmEST ~ So if you haven’t voted please do!

As of this post Tony is in 4th place with 182 nominations. Each Official Category will have 7 finalists. These include 3 with the most nominations from the public, 3 selected by members of the Real-Time Academy and 1 Wildcard Finalist. The Wildcard Finalist will be selected by the Nominating Board from among the top 25 nominees with the most nominations after the nominating period ends.

Note: Retweeted nominations and tweets starting with @replies do not count toward the rankings. Voting for the same person in the same category more than once just replaces the text of your original vote; it does not count as an additional vote.

Thanks everyone for nominating Tony and sharing the information on Tony’s Shorty Awards Campaign. If you’ve voted please continue to share the info.

Voting ends February 19th 2015 at 11:59pmEST ~ So if you haven’t voted please do!

As of this post Tony is in 4th place with 142 nominations. Each Official Category will have 7 finalists. These include 3 with the most nominations from the public, 3 selected by members of the Real-Time Academy and 1 Wildcard Finalist. The Wildcard Finalist will be selected by the Nominating Board from among the top 25 nominees with the most nominations after the nominating period ends.

Note: Retweeted nominations and tweets starting with @replies do not count toward the rankings. Voting for the same person in the same category more than once just replaces the text of your original vote; it does not count as an additional vote.

Tony was born in July 2000 and has been at the truck stop since he was a cub. According to Mr. Sandlin he got Tony from a breeder in Texas. In 2003, three tigers: Toby and Rainbow 18 years old and 8 year old Khan were removed from the truck stop due to AWA volations which included: “unsanitary feeding practices; mishandling tigers; and failure to provide veterinary care, shelter from inclement weather, clean drinking water, and knowledgeable employees to care for the tigers.” The USDA allowed Sandlin to keep one tiger Tony who was 3 years old at the time. https://freetonythetiger.wordpress.com/tony-left-behind-in-2003/

Tony’s has brought worldwide attention to the serious issue of privately owned tigers in the U.S.. Michael Sandlin’s state permit was found illegal and revoked in 2011 by Judge Michael Caldwell; this decision was upheld by The Louisiana Appeal Court and the Louisiana Supreme Court. Though the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries had the authority to seize Tony and enforce the law and these rulings, they refused to. When Mr. Sandlin exhausted his appeals he enlisted Sen. Rick Ward to propose a bill to exempt himself from the 2006 law barring private ownership of big cats. The bill was passed by the Louisiana Legislature and signed by Gov. Bobby Jindal. The Animal Legal Defense Fund has been working tirelessly on Tony’s case and has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Louisiana taxpayers, challenging the state’s new special exemption. http://aldf.org/cases-campaigns/timelines/tony-the-tiger/

Three sanctuaries have standing offers of homes for Tony. One such sanctuary’s tiger habitats start at 8,000 sq ft or more, all natural substrate, perches, hammock, pool, toys/enrichment and access to an indoor temperature controlled building. Keepers have 4 year zoology degrees and a vet hospital on-site. Another sanctuary recently debuted a 2.5 acre habitat for their cats to “vacation in” with platforms, dens, trees, foliage, a pond and enrichment toys. A sanctuary in Colorado, whose executive director and founder has 35 years of experience in rescuing, transporting, relocating and acclimating tigers and other big cats to their new habitats without incident, can provide a natural habitat 10-20 acres in size on rolling prairie grasslands, complete with swimming ponds and seasonal lakes. They all have underground dens (that stay about 60 degrees year round), shade shelters and play structures, and all kinds of toys and enrichment. His enclosure may be 3200 sq ft, but it’s a dismal 1600 sq ft of concrete and a small “grassy area” that offers him no opportunity to run or engage in any natural behaviors. He has been subjected to the noise and smells of the truck stop and the taunting of tourists for 15 years.

Even in a part of the world famous for its love all things tiger, Grosse Tete’s Tiger Truck Stop stands out. Located 15 minutes across the Mississippi from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, it only takes a quick glance at the truck stop’s cramped central station to figure out there’s something a little different going on.

Scattered around are the usual items of roadside memorabilia: a dimly lit fried chicken stand, rows of “support our troops” necklaces, a smattering of Louisiana State University shot glasses. So far, nothing unusual to report. But right next to the truck stop, strolling around a 3,200-square-foot wire cage, is Tony the tiger.

Tony, the 550-pound Siberian Bengal tiger, is one of the most unusual gas station mascots in the United States. He’s also one of the most controversial.

The animal is the latest, and most well known, in a long line of tigers at the truck stop. The 12 years he’s spent there have seen constant accusations, lawsuits and countersuits between truck stop owner Michael Sandlin, animal rights activists and government organizations. Rarely has a roadside novelty caused so much trouble, or epitomized such a clash of cultures.

A visit to the truck stop doesn’t necessarily guarantee an audience with Tony. On the day of my visit, which was miserably rainy, Tony had retired to a little kennel tucked away on the far side of his cage. Sandlin, braving the downpour as he heads from one side of the truck stop to the other, is apologetic. “He sleeps around 18 hours a day,” he says, glancing over at Tony’s soaking cage. “He is a cat, after all.” A cat he is – except that Tony eats 15 pounds daily of horse and beef muscle meat.

The cage itself is fairly basic: a bare concrete floor crisscrossed with wire netting, with a few separate areas for Tony to wander in and out of. It’s surprisingly big, and it certainly doesn’t look as miserable as some animal activists would have you believe; on the other hand, it’s not as large as most sanctuaries, and it’s hard to see how Tony would be able to run around and build up a head of steam.

Sandlin is a big man. Tall and broad shouldered, with slicked-back grey hair and bright blue eyes, he speaks confidently in a heavy, slow southern drawl. It’s his truck stop, his tiger and, these days, his battle.

He arrived in Grosse Tete by way of Houston in 1988. He had little money but some unusual cargo: two tiger cubs, a male Bengal mix named Toby and a female Siberian called Rainbow.

The idea for a tiger-themed truck stop wasn’t originally his – it was his brother’s – but he was the one who decided to give it a go. Baton Rouge seemed an ideal location, the town already dominated by tiger imagery courtesy of its beloved Louisiana State University Tigers football team.

For a long time, Sandlin says, things went pretty smoothly. It wasn’t until Toby and Rainbow were retired at the age of 19 – whether by choice or by force isn’t totally clear – and Tony turned up that pressure from outsiders seeking to remove Tony from the truck stop increased.

“Prior to the retiring of the first two cats there wasn’t much of a problem with animal rights [activists],” he says. “In fact, if you’d asked me 10 years ago that we would be having animal rights legislation through the Louisiana legislature in a state that claims to love tigers so much – the ‘sportsman’s paradise’ – I’ve have told you you’d be crazy. And yet today we find that’s exactly what’s happened.”

While there had been sporadic attempts by animal rights organizations to relocate Sandlin’s tigers throughout the years, it wasn’t until 2006 that any rules or regulations were put in place to aid them. That year, a bill written by a then Louisiana state representative, Warren Triche, banning private ownership of big cats passed the state senate. Tony’s existence at the truck stop suddenly became precarious.

“It’s very clear that previous owners were supposed to be given the right to keep their animals,” Sandlin says. “I assume the legislation put that in to protect the property rights and personal freedoms of people that already love these animals. It would be the right thing to do, not step in and take someone’s beloved animal from them.”

The 2006 law did have a grandfather clause. Big cats legally owned before 2006 were allowed to stay with their owners, but only if a permit was granted by the Louisiana department of wildlife and fisheries on an annual basis. Permits were issued if the department felt the cats were in safe hands, and in Tony’s case they apparently did; permits were issued without much drama in 2009, 2010 and 2011.

The Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), a California-based animal rights organization, didn’t feel quite the same way. They filed suit on the grounds that Tony’s standard of care wasn’t up to scratch, and in 2011 a Louisiana district court agreed, banning the issuing of permits for Tony. Next came an acrimonious series of legal battles between Sandlin, the ALDF and Wildlife and Fisheries (the latter seemingly stuck on the middle and sued by all sides) that saw permits issued and rescinded, the threat of Tony’s forced removal growing stronger or weaker with every ruling.

Last year, the Louisiana senate again became involved. An exemption in the 2006 act, written and sponsored by Republican state senator Rick Ward, was carved out solely in order to keep Tony at the truck stop. It squeaked through the senate by a narrow 20-18 margin and was signed into law by Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal.

In keeping with the litigious history of the saga, the ALDF immediately filed a lawsuit challenging the exemption. That challenge, in turn, was thrown out in November. The organization is currently looking to have it refiled in another court. The future for Tony is looking as murky as ever.

Unsurprisingly, Sandlin and his supporters see it as an individual rights issue – the fight of a man who wants to keep his beloved animal in the face of shadowy governmental and activist groups determined to snatch it away. Those on the other side view it in very simple terms: for them, it’s a fight for Tony’s liberation.

“It’s pretty pathetic,” Matthew Liebman, the ALDF’s senior attorney overseeing the case, says. “You know, a truck stop is certainly no habitat for a tiger. Compared to the natural range of a tiger it’s minuscule, there’s little enrichment that simulates the natural environment and it’s way too close to the highway and the gas pumps. Tigers have especially sensitive hearing, so all the road noise, rattling trucks and all that, can be incredibly detrimental to the wellbeing of the tiger.

“[We’ve had] letters from people with much higher credentials than Michael Sandlin saying that [the truck stop cage] is definitely not a proper habitat even within the captive industry. The veterinary experts, the animal behaviorists we’ve talked to all agree it’s certainly not an ideal or even a very good enclosure for Tony to inhabit.”

Brittany Peet, deputy director of captive-animal law enforcement at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), is even more forthright. “Tony currently lives in a squalid tiny cage on mostly concrete breathing gas and diesel fumes all day long,” she says. “The reputable sanctuaries that are ready to assist Michael Sandlin in placing Tony the tiger have huge, naturalistic enclosures with grass and natural ponds, where there are acres of land where Tony could choose to have the company of other tigers if he likes. He could engage in other behavior, like running, which he just can’t do at the Tiger Truck Stop. The best place for Tony is not in a tiny cage in a gas station.”

Where to house Tony, if he was to be removed from the truck stop, is a major source of contention. Sandlin claims that all animals removed by the wildlife and fisheries department have died within two months of being taken away, although official figures appear to show otherwise. On the other hand, several places mooted as possible options for Tony have had their own controversies over their standard of care.

Right now, nobody’s happy. Animal rights groups are frustrated by their inability to move Tony into a sanctuary, while Sandlin is upset at what he sees as the meddling of outside groups in his business. The whole saga may end only when the tiger eventually dies.

There’s a faded photo in the truck stop of a younger, black-haired Michael Sandlin cradling a very small Tony in his arms. In it, Sandlin throws a slightly bashful smile at the camera as the tiger contently suckles on a pink bottle held firm in Sandlin’s right hand. For all the accusations of mistreatment directed against the truck stop, for all the questions about Tony’s living conditions, there’s no doubt the owner genuinely loves his animals. Sandlin doesn’t normally have much trouble holding forth about his tigers, but when asked what Tony means to him, he stops and pauses for a long time.

“Tony is probably the biggest part of what’s left of what I consider to be my life’s work,” he says, eventually. “If there are no tigers here anymore I’ll probably sell and go ahead and retire because I’m not interested in operating the truck stop without the tigers. They’ve been here from day one. He’s no longer just an attraction. I’ve loved all of my cats, and as hard as times have got over the last 27 years, they never went without food or veterinary care. It’s not about the money anymore. It’s about the principle of it, about keeping him safe, and I think we’ve accomplished that.”

There probably won’t be any more tigers after Tony goes, last year’s exemption applying solely to Tony and not the truck stop in general. In terms of economics, the tiger novelty angle hasn’t worked – Sandlin says it has cost the business over $400,000, mostly in legal fees – but that is, of course, not the point. With both the truck stop and activists vowing to keep the fight going, the strange saga of America’s roadside tiger doesn’t look to be ending anytime soon.